


Dissociation

by icewhisper



Series: Holiday Cheer & Tears [4]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Canonical Character Death, M/M, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-04
Packaged: 2019-09-05 17:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16814974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: For the first week after the Vanishing Point, Mick hadn’t been able to think about fire without wanting to throw up. His fingers still twitched towards the pocket where he kept his lighter, but every time skin touched metal, he saw the recording Gideon had stored; the one of the entire place blowing up in something that should have been beautiful except for the fact that Len had been at the center of it instead of by his side.





	Dissociation

**Author's Note:**

> A secondary warning that this fic does have self-harm via Mick with his lighter, so... Yeah. Warnings are a thing.

For the first week after the Vanishing Point, Mick hadn’t been able to think about fire without wanting to throw up. His fingers still twitched towards the pocket where he kept his lighter, but every time skin touched metal, he saw the recording Gideon had stored; the one of the entire place blowing up in something that should have been beautiful except for the fact that Len had been at the center of it instead of by his side.

The first time it happened, he cried until he threw up.

The second time, he slammed his fist into the wall and broke his hand in three places.

The third time, he shut down.

By the fourth, he’d stopped carrying the lighter with him at all.

Fire had always been something beautiful to him. It was a constant, eating at the oxygen around it as it burned. He’d spent his childhood years watching things burn in fascination, watching as wood and paper went from being something to being nothing. His clothes had smelled like ash and smoke. His skin bore the marks of a life spent too close to the flame.

He’d always planned to die in it, to let his body shrivel and come apart the way pieces of wood do in a campfire. It had always felt like a fitting end. He thought it may have been why he was so ready to stick his arm into the Wellspring. The burn and the size of the explosion that would come would be _glorious_.

But Len had died in his place and there was nothing beautiful or glorious about that.

It wasn’t the same as when his family had died, he didn’t think. Back then, he’d wished he’d burned with them, because that was easier than the guilt. He’d mourned and Len had gotten him back on his feet, because Len hadn’t known better than to distance himself from someone like him.

Len wasn’t here to pull him out of it this time. Nate tried with searching looks and stuttering attempts to ask Mick about the burns and stupid questions of _are you okay_ , but it wasn’t Len. It was never going to be Len again and the others didn’t understand. He went back to the flame, because trauma and grief didn’t heal mental illness. The burn of a cigarette against his skin. The heat against his finger when he held the lighter down too long. The pain when he held his hand over the flame.

Sometimes, he saw Len when he did it, somewhere in the hazy fog of flame and peace that only lasted as long as the fire burned. The world stopped mattering. He stopped existing. Nothing hurt if he stared into the flame long enough.

The times he saw Len, though…

He’d stopped seeing him as much after the Professor took the receiver out of his head and whether they had to do with each other or not, Mick wasn’t sure, but he’d _missed him_. He missed Len so much it hurt to breathe. He’d gotten better at pretending it didn’t, that he didn’t spend nights making Gideon play old news reels of Len until he fell asleep.

Len came back with the flame sometimes, though, and it was like Mick could feel him still. He pretended it was Len bandaging the burns Mick didn’t remember wrapping himself. He let himself pretend the touches were Len and not the chill of the ship’s AC unit. He lied to himself and said the voice was Len and not some old memory in his head.

He was terrified of the day he forgot what Len’s voice with its stupid Central City accent sounded like.

He thought he was already forgetting what his smile looked like, the one he’d have when a plan went right or Lisa made him proud. All he could remember anymore were sad smiles and the way Len used to sigh his name when he was worried.

“I’m right here, partner,” he used to say. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You’re not,” Mick mumbled as the flame flickered in his vision, “but neither am I. It’s okay.” It was really, really not, but he had a hard time thinking about it with Len’s voice in his ear sometimes and the lit tip of the lighter burning against his inner arm. He dropped his head back against the wall and wondered if he should have been able to feel the pain. He hadn’t had much feeling in his arms since Shreveport.

Maybe he hadn’t burned far enough to find live nerve endings.

It didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered.

The flame was there and everything in his head was starting to go quiet. Let it burn. Let him burn until the fluid ran out.

He really should call his shrink. Len would have wanted him to call his shrink, but Len wasn’t there and the fire was. The fire was all he had left anymore when the ship and their old safe houses were full of ghosts and Lisa couldn’t look at him without crying.

“Mick…”

The flame burned bright against his skin as the world fell away.

Len looked over his shoulder at the thing behind him. It looked like his mother with her dark skin and wild curls, but it wasn’t. Damn it, he _knew_ it wasn’t, but his heart still ached. “I know,” he murmured as he finished wrapping the burn on Mick’s arm. “I’m coming back in a minute.”

“The more you pull yourself from the Speed Force, the weaker you get,” it reminded him in his mother’s voice. “Your form is fading and, yet, you still visit him. Why? Your vows to him ended when you died.”

He ran near-translucent fingers down Mick’s cheek and watched his partner’s face twitch in response. He was asleep, at least, and Len had been able to coax the lighter from his hand before the burn had gone too deep into the muscle. “I’m not dead yet.”

He was gone before Mick woke up.

The End


End file.
